1. Field
This invention is directed to the replenishment of consumable items in an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Consumable items, such as ink and toner, are used to form an image on a recording medium such as paper, by an image forming apparatus. Substantial development effort has been applied to the engineering of these image forming apparatuses, with the goal of increasing the output and making routine maintenance less frequent. However, the consumable items must still be replenished periodically in order for the device to continue output. In general, replenishment is performed by human operators, who interrupt the operation of the machine in order to refill a reservoir with the appropriate consumable item. Such necessary interruption increases the apparatus downtime, reducing the throughput and increasing the maintenance expenses for the devices.
In order to reduce the frequency with which such routine maintenance must be performed, the reservoirs may be made larger; however, this may increase the size of the machine, and may not be acceptable for consumable items which must be used relatively quickly. For example, large reservoirs of ink may dry out or change in color, and therefore may not be stored for long periods of time in large reservoirs.